


and yes, we can keep living like this

by nahchilles



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 23:56:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10797429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahchilles/pseuds/nahchilles
Summary: The aftermath of the most heart-wrenching, crushing defeat of Tooru's entire high school career.





	and yes, we can keep living like this

 

The morning after what should be the most heart-wrenching, crushing defeat of his entire high school career is surprisingly normal. He wakes up and almost trips over his gym bag, gets the mail on his way to the kitchen (his mom never remembers), drops another envelope on the kitchen counter, wonders why his entire body aches so much and then thinks:  _oh, right._

He remembers and suddenly feels empty and lost and so fucking exhausted. He doesn't think he can stomach breakfast or his mom's gentle but firm needling about the growing pile of envelopes on the kitchen counter, so he walks out the door, not really knowing where he's going but needing to be anywhere but here and anyone but himself, at least for a while. 

He thinks belatedly that he probably should've brought a jacket. It's early and the cold air stings, but he's still gone for long enough that when he finally makes his way back home, his mom is sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. 

She looks up when she hears the front door open and immediately takes on her default Worried Mother expression. 

"Tooru, how long were you out? You should've left a note or something, I didn't know where you were." she says, setting down her newspaper and frowning. "Did you go out without a jacket?"

"Yeah," he breathes as he turns away from her to pour himself a cup of coffee. "Sorry."

She sighs. "Just remember next time, alright?" 

"Okay, mom." he says. He finally turns to face her, trying to keep his expression neutral. He probably doesn't do as good a job as he thinks because her expression softens into something more concerned.

"Hey," she says. "How're you holding up?"

He takes a long sip of coffee before replying, "Fine."

She raises an eyebrow. "Fine?"

"Yes, mom." he sighs.

His mom looks skeptical, but when all he offers are monosyllabic answers and evasions, she eventually gives up and lets him retreat to his room.

She leaves him alone for the most part after that; she at least knows that there are some things he needs to get through on his own, things that no amount of her prodding, or the dozens of missed calls and texts from his teammates on his phone, or talking about it can solve. 

He sighs and rolls over. No matter how long he spends lying in bed staring up at the ceiling, he can't seem to get rid of the tiredness seeping into his bones.

 

\--

 

The end of the world came in the form of a fumbled receive and the referee's whistle.

He doesn’t quite remember how he got from the court to the changing room to collapsing face first into his bed, it's all a blur of shaking hands with Karasuno ( _for the last time_ , his brain unhelpfully reminds him), his teammates' concerned faces, tears shed silently in the bus, Iwaizumi sitting next to him but refusing to _look at him_ –

He couldn't help but think he should maybe throw something, or punch a wall, or whatever the hell it is people do when they fuck up the most important thing in their entire short, kind of pathetic life.

Instead, he dropped his gym bag somewhere on his bedroom floor where it landed with a thud, crawled under the covers, and drifted into unconsciousness.

 

\--

 

Maybe he'd always known that this would happen, he thinks bitterly as he lies on his back and tosses a volleyball up above his head and catches it again. (It's the beat-up one that Iwaizumi had gotten him for his birthday in their second year of middle school. It's dirty and worn after so many years of use, but he couldn't bring himself to throw it away.)

There were days when he'd practice serves for hours and hours but couldn't seem to get it right, when his sets were just the slightest bit off. On those days, the wall standing before him seemed impenetrable; Ushijima and Kageyama were giants on the other side and he was standing on stilts so fragile they could break at any moment. 

So, maybe somewhere at the back of his mind, he'd known that this would be the inevitable conclusion, that no matter what he did, it would never be enough.

He tosses the ball a little too high and it bounces off the ceiling and rolls away. He finds he doesn't have the energy to pick it up again.

 

\--

 

On Monday, he tells his mom he's coming down with something. He can tell she doesn't believe him, but she purses her lips and calls in sick for him anyway. 

He’s getting kind of sick of all the worried glances she throws at him when she thinks he isn’t looking. He sort of wishes she'd yell at him to get out of bed and get on with his life, but of course, being her, she doesn't.

He isn’t really surprised when Iwaizumi walks in a day later. Though his mom is ridiculously understanding and all, she never quite knows what to do with him when he gets like this, and usually ends up calling Iwaizumi to pry him out of his room and back into real life.

He finds Tooru slouched in the office chair thingy that his mom had bought for him in his first year of high school, spinning around aimlessly. It used to make him feel important, like he's the CEO of some huge corporation instead of a dumb seventeen-year-old who has no idea where his life is going.

He stops the chair to face Iwaizumi and looks up at him expectantly. His arms are crossed, but the thin mask of disapproval he wears doesn't really do anything to cover the concern that lies beneath it. Tooru sighs and goes back to spinning around in circles.

"Your mom called," Iwaizumi says. "She's getting worried, you know."

"Well, I can’t imagine why." He’s getting kind of dizzy, but he _really_ doesn’t want to have this conversation.

Iwaizumi sighs and rubs a hand over his face, obviously tired of Tooru's shit, which just fuels his determination to make this as difficult as possible. 

"She said you got three acceptance letters," he continues.

"Four. And she doesn't know that they're acceptance letters." Tooru mutters. He hasn't even bothered opening them.

He looks up and sees Iwaizumi looking down at him pointedly.

"You're gonna have to decide sometime."

"What if I've decided I don’t want to go to college?" Tooru retorts. "What if want to become a hermit and live up in the mountains or something?" 

"God, you're fucking impossible." Iwaizumi sighs. "Get changed, we're going out." And then he just leaves, walks out the door without even giving Tooru a chance to say anything.

Tooru contemplates just sitting there and leaving Iwaizumi to wait outside in the cold, but knows that he'll get impatient and come back to physically drag him out of the house. He gets up and starts hunting for a clean t-shirt and jeans.

 

\--

 

They go to the convenience store a few blocks away and Iwaizumi gets him that gross strawberry milk drink he's loved since they were kids, and a popsicle for himself. They sit on the curb in front of the store. Iwaizumi eats his popsicle and Tooru sips his drink and they resolutely don't look at each other. 

Tooru hasn't said a word since the absentminded thank you he'd muttered when Iwaizumi handed him the drink, and Iwaizumi seems preoccupied with staring at the street and not speaking, which is fucking rich considering he's the one who dragged Tooru out here in the first place. It's way too cold to be doing this anyway; he's starting to shiver and the drink is like ice in his hand.

He's steeling himself to say something dumb that’ll probably make Iwaizumi more pissed at him than he already is when Iwaizumi beats him to it.

"I'm sorry," Iwaizumi blurts.

Tooru's head snaps up to look at him.

_"_ _What_ _?"_

"I'm sorry," he repeats.

"Yeah, I heard you the first time." Tooru's says. " _Why_ _?_ "

Iwaizumi sighs. "Aren't you mad at me?" he asks.

"...No? Why would I be?" Tooru frowns.

"That last receive," Iwaizumi continues. "I fucked it up. I could've gotten it, if I'd just–" he exhales sharply.

"It's my fault. That we lost. So, I'm sorry."

He stares up at Tooru like he expects him to do something absurd like agree with him, and Tooru wonders how the hell someone who's usually so levelheaded and calm can be such an utter fucking moron at times. 

"Iwa-chan, what the hell." 

Iwaizumi opens his mouth, probably to spew some more nonsense, but Tooru doesn't let him.

"Hajime, I'm gonna put this lightly: you're an idiot." Tooru says. "This isn't your fault, Iwa-chan, nobody thinks that. We're a team, and we never would've made it this far without you." He takes a shaky breath before continuing. "I never would've made it this far without you. Besides, if there’s anyone you should be blaming–" 

His voice cracks, which is pretty damn embarassing, and his eyes are starting to sting, which is even worse. 

"No. No, of course not, what the fuck, Oikawa.  _Look at me_ , for god's sake.  _Tooru_."

That finally gets him to stop evading Iwaizumi's eyes.

"...Are you crying?" he asks incredulously.

"No." Tooru tries to laugh, but it comes out more like a sob.

"God, Oikawa." Iwaizumi says in his trademark exasperated Oikawa voice, but he pulls Tooru into a hug. Tooru buries his face in his shoulder, crying in earnest now for the first time since the match.

"It just– sucks, doesn't it?” Tooru says into his shoulder.

"...Yeah, it kind of does."

They probably look pretty dumb crying on the sidewalk in front of a convenience store, but there's no one else insane enough to be out in this weather and see them, so it doesn't really matter.

He pulls away eventually, eyes puffy and face tear-streaked, but his smile is genuine.

 

\--

 

Because karma is a bitch with a personal vendetta against him and his life is an eternal cosmic joke, the next day he winds up actually bedridden and coming down with something.

Iwaizumi insists on stopping by after school because  _of course you got sick, Shittikawa, you need to stop overworking yourself._

He brings his laptop so they can watch a livestream of the Karasuno - Shiratorizawa match. Even though Tooru insists that he's only watching to see Tobio and Ushiwaka get their asses kicked, Iwaizumi can see the pride in his eyes whenever Karasuno scores a point.

 

\--

 

"Well, well, well." Hanamaki says loudly the moment Tooru steps into the gym, shit eating grin firmly in place. 

"Look who's finally decided to show up." Matsukawa appears seemingly out of thin air beside him, holding a volleyball.

Tooru curses. He'd been hoping for a more subtle entrance, but that's out the window now.

"I missed one practice!  _One!_ "  Tooru splutters.

Matsukawa clicks his tongue. "You're setting a bad example for the first years. Look at them, they're totally unmotivated!" 

The first years in question are doing spiking drills, unconcerned by the scene unfolding before them. They probably didn't even care that he was gone, the little bastards.

He turns back to his supposed friends to tell them as much and barely dodges the volleyball hurtling through the air right for his face. It smacks the back of Hanamaki's head with remarkable force that can only be attributed to one of Iwaizumi's spikes. 

"Hey, Shittikawa, how about you actually practice instead of fucking around over there?" Iwaizumi yells from across the gym, but he's grinning, so Tooru grins back. 

Hanamaki, still clutching the back of his head and swearing profusely, yells: "Oi, Iwaizumi, watch where you're throwing those things!" Iwaizumi yells back something petulant, and they dissolve into childish bickering.

He's missed this, Tooru realizes. It's only been a few days, but,  _god_ , he missed it so much. 

"Well," Matsukawa says as he slaps Tooru's back hard enough to send him into a coughing fit. "Glad to have you back, captain."

 

\--

 

Four months later finds Tooru sitting cross legged on his bed with four acceptance letters spread out in front of him.

This is how Iwaizumi finds him when he walks in that afternoon. He stops dead in his tracks for a second before dropping his backpack on Tooru's spinny chair and sitting on the edge of his bed, careful not to crumple any of the letters. 

"So, have you decided on a school yet?" he says after a moment. For all he tries to sound casual, Tooru can tell he's nervous. He is too, kind of, but he is decided and probably has been from the second he found out which college Iwaizumi picked.

"Yeah, I think I have." he says, proud that his voice doesn't shake. He picks up the letter to his right, the one closest to Iwaizumi, and hands it to him. He holds his breath as Iwaizumi reads it, watches the relief wash over him before he frowns.

"Are you sure?" he says, eyebrows knitted together. "What about the school in Tokyo, the one with the–" 

"Iwa-chan," Tooru cuts in firmly. "I'm sure."

And he is. He'll turn down the fancy school in Tokyo with the championship-winning team because he doesn't need them, because it doesn't matter that they have some of the best spikers in the entire country; none of them could ever spike his tosses the way Iwaizumi can, anyway. 

In the end, it doesn't matter where they go because whatever team they join, he and Iwaizumi will  _make_  it the best.

Tooru doesn't need stilts because with Iwaizumi by his side, he can face giants. Together, they can do  _anything_.

**Author's Note:**

> does this add up with canon???? no, probably not since i'm not good at remembering details and didn't bother looking up what actually happened, so think of this as slight canon divergence i guess.
> 
> i also didn't spend much time editing this, so please. tell me if u find any glaring mistakes 
> 
> anyway, this is my first ever (completed) haikyuu fic. i tried my best (sort of), but i'm trying to improve so i'd really appreciate any feedback, positive or negative.
> 
> thank you for taking the time out of your day (or night) to read this and i hope you enjoyed!!!


End file.
